On HBO's Real Time Friday night (click to play the video at left) Bill Maher was going over the basics of the US Attorney scandal with former New Mexico US Attorney David Iglesias when conservative guest Lisa Schiffren chimed in that Iglesias was failing to understand that US Attorney jobs were political. A surprised Maher tried to clarify by differentiating the appointment of US Attorneys from their actual law enforcement duties, but Schiffren stuck to her point. In addition to condoning the selective enforcement of the law, Schiffren implies that the oath to uphold the Constitution, taken by political appointees, was also secondary to politics. And she speaks from experience as a former political apppointee!

Clearly Schriffren just earned herself a jury duty pass for the rest of her life. To understand the outrageousness of her suggestion one need not look any further than the statement Iglesias made about his firing two minutes earlier:

Iglesias: What they wanted me to do was come up with some bogus prosecutions with no evidence of voter fraud. That's number one. And number two, they wanted me to rush indictments against democrats who were engaging in corrupt activities. I couldn't do that because the case wasn't ready. It's that simple.

Essentially the White House, along with Republican Congresswoman Heather Wilson (R-NM) and Senator Pete Domenci (R-NM), who pressured Iglesias directly, were upset that Igesias refused to use the power of his office to help them fraudulently win elections. In other words, Iglesias was fired because he would not help the Republican party circumvent our Democracy. And that is okay according to Schiffren!

Schiffren: You know, with all due respect, it's a political, you're in a political job, you're a political appointee.

Maher: Woh, it's not a political job, it's a political appointment. Once you get the job, shouldn't it not be political?

Schiffren: You know what, I have been a political appointee also and sworn the same oath to the Constitution, and the truth is, you can't take politics out of politics, you were there to serve an administration that will have its own ends some of which are stupid, petty and trivial and sometimes the guy above you wants to put his guy in your slot...

Right! These are the same people who would sanctimoniously pontificate "the rule of law" if let's say Clinton had done the same thing for the same reasons. IOKIYAR should not trump the Constitution no matter what...

If a Democrat said what she said, stating that partisan politics trumps even our Constitution, she'd jump on that Democrat so fast it'd make the Democrat's head spin, especially if the Democrat was implying that it's okay to use the office of the U.S. Attorneys to game elections for partisan purposes, or any other federal department or agency for that matter being used to promote a purely partisan political agenda.

Which means that when a Democrat enters the White House in January 2009, she shouldn't say a word if the Democratic president institutes what the Bush administration has done throughout our federal government, peppering it with purely partisan Democratic hacks whose sole purpose is to use any means necessary to assure Democratic Party control of the federal government, including "fixing" elections if necessary. In other words, trashing our Constitution and subverting our democracy in pursuit of the purely partisan goal of maintaining authoritarian, totalitarian control over our federal government.

Once again, is Schiffren nuts?

As it is, it'll take years to root out all the purely partisan, "loyal Bushie" Republican hacks in our federal government who have damaged our federal government extensively with their un-American, anti-Constitution thinking. Unfortunately, fixing the federal judiciary will take decades, requiring Democrats and conscientious Independents to be eternally vigilant, especially with all the religous fascists in the federal judicial system at present.

Of course, these ethics-challenged GOP will posture high-mindedly about the sacredness of the Law and the Constitution only if it serves their interests politically. Otherwise, they will cynically and covertly push their own agenda even if it blatantly violates all legal and Constitutional principles. Schiffren has bluntly stated exactly what the criminals occupying the White House are actually thinking and saying in private to each other.

I'd say this calls for a re-examination of every single case that has been federally prosecuted since January 2001 - whatever the verdict. Talk about a judicial nightmare!

First order is to get those who are innocent and IN jail OUT of jail (Can you say, "hundreds of lawsuits"? I knew you could.) I'm betting that a retrial is not feasible for those who were exonerated but should not have been - would fall under "double jeopardy" laws, wouldn't it? Or is there a provision for instances of blatant favoritism shown by incompetent or corrupt judges and prosecutors?

Is selective prosecution based on partisan politics a basis for disbarment?

I didn't mean it is three months before the election at this moment ... I intended to say that they seem to think the voting public forgets anything that happened more than three months back when they vote.

But there is a voting revolution heating up. Impeachment is back in the news almost every day now.

The California democratic party voted as much:

The California Democratic Party approved a resolution on Sunday to begin withdrawing U.S. soldiers from Iraq and calling on Congress to investigate the actions of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and take appropriate action, including impeachment.

This Fascist conduct by rove/bu$$hco to use the DoJ federal district US attorneys as a weapon against the Democratic Party to achieve one party Nazi Republican Party Christo-Fascist rule was also standard practice at the Department of Justice in Washington DC headquarters - for interns and new hired lawyers out of college. At DoJ headquarters AG Ashcroft took hiring away from the DoJ careerists and gave the job of hiring to the political appointees. Ashcroft started this new procedure, Gonzales, and McNulty continued this practice until the oversight/spotlight of what a gross litmus test this was to exclude American college law school graduates that did not think exactly like Fascist bu$$hCo/Gonzo/Rove. (This type of un-DEMOCRATIC and un-AMERICAN sort of conduct was key to KKKarl's scheme of one party long-term Fascist Rule.

snip:

The honors program, established during the Eisenhower administration, is a highly regarded recruiting program that attracts thousands of applicants from top-flight law schools for about 150 spots each year and has been overseen for most of its history by senior career lawyers at Justice. Then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft reworked the program in 2002, shifting control from career employees to himself and his aides.
(Ashcroft now teaches at Pat Robertson's Regency Law School.)

...

According to current and former Justice employees, many of whom spoke about fellow lawyers on the condition of anonymity, the centralization of the honors program selection process in the hands of political appointees markedly changed the profile of the entry-level lawyers hired, particularly in the department's civil rights division.

Since 2002, when Ashcroft adopted the hiring method the department is now abandoning, a large share of honors hires have had strong conservative or Republican ties, according to Justice lawyers and law school career-placement officers.

Funny I didn't see THIS terrorism in the papers today, but I saw the guy in Kansas City who shot some people:

"""Man Arrested for Bomb Plot at Texas Abortion Clinic
In Texas, a potentially major attack was avoided this weekend at an abortion clinic in Austin. Police say they arrested a man who placed an unexploded bomb containing nearly two-thousand nails, a propane tank and a device similar to a rocket outside the clinic’s doors. """

...and of course, THIS WEEK's CMSM coordinated "talking points" are "Blame Tenet for the Iraq War."

A former CIA employee was on Larry King blaming Tenet, and Limbaugh's guest host was ALSO blaming Tenet for the Iraq War, as well as Clinton, because Tenet also served under Clinton, and also blamed the vague "The Liberals", of course, no specific names, just "The Liberals"...

Thank God for folks like Maher who host people like Iglesias who are true American heros. I am so happy to see all of this come to the light of day.

Don't think it's making a difference? In my local paper, The Californian in Temecula, CA, a VERY red town and county (Riverside), 59% said they believe the Dems will take back the White House, while only 37% said they didn't think so. Only 4% were "not sure". And that is in a heavily RED county (about 60%/40%). How's that for a flip?

This kind of info is shaming Repubs into realizing they have been taken for the most expensive and degrading ride on the planet. The Dems damn well BETTER clean things up. I understand "decline to state" voters are now becoming the fastest growing group in the U.S. THEY will be the DECIDERS in the next election. Fasten your seat belts!!

The filthy fascist politics of KKKarl Rove causes a fallout of talent at DoJ headquarters. By design the Voting Civil Rights Division at DoJ comes unglued and dismantled. The Rove/bu$$hie loyalists are shown the welcome mat and the talented/experienced careerists are kicked out the door and to the curb.

...

The comments below are quoted from a statement by Bob Kengle, formerly the deputy chief of the voting section of the Civil Rights Division and a Justice Department veteran, as saying that he'd left because he'd reached his "personal breaking point."

snip:

Worse, such contacts could be less than well-intentioned, often seeming to occur after the front office had obtained some piece of information, or received a question or "helpful suggestion" from Republican officials or attorneys. This was a particular problem in a high profile redistricting case involving the State of Georgia that we litigated from 2001-2003. I felt that it took every bit of my abilities to prevent the Voting Section from being hijacked in that case by pressure from the Georgia Republican Party. While I believe that with the unwavering support of my section chief Joe Rich I was successful in doing so, by late 2004 I became convinced that we no longer would be able to intercede in the same way.

But by late 2004, I did not believe that I could ensure that following the law and facts would remain a higher priority than partisan favoritism. This was based partly upon my expectation that the Administration, if returned to office, would feel less constraint against heavy-handed management and biased enforcement than had been the case in the aftermath of the controversial 2000 election. To put it bluntly, before 2004 the desire to politicize the Voting Section's work was evident, but it was tempered by a recognition that there were limits to doing so. That such constraints diminished over time is evidenced by the well-known and ham-fisted handling of decisions involving Texas' congressional redistricting plan in late 2003 and Georgia's voter ID law in 2005. My concerns also were greatly magnified by the evident intention of the political appointees to replace Joe Rich after the 2004 election with a new section chief who would be a willing "team player".

A secret agreement signing off by AG Gonzales to give the hiring and firing job for personnel over at DoJ to Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling. Sampson and Goodling were given free hand to mold the DoJ to the political benefit of KKKarl Rove - so the DoJ could become the political attack machine/weapon of bu$$hCo/rove and 100 year Republican single party rule.

snip:

An original draft of Gonzales's delegation of authority to Sampson and Goodling was so broad that it did not even require the two aides to obtain the final approval of the attorney general before moving to dismiss other department officials, according to records obtained by National Journal.

The department's Office of Legal Counsel feared that such an unconditional delegation of authority was unconstitutional, the documents show. As a result, the original delegation was rewritten so that in its final form the order required "any proposed appointments or removals of personnel" be "presented to the Attorney General... for approval, and each appointment or removal shall be made in the name of the Attorney General."

The senior administration official who had firsthand knowledge of the plan said that Gonzales and other Justice officials had a "clear obligation" to disclose the plan's existence to the House and Senate Judiciary committees --- but the official said that, as far as he knew, they had not done so. When the committees began to inquire into the firings of the U.S. attorneys, the official said, Congress had a right to know that the firings were part of an ambitious effort to install administration loyalists throughout the department. The official spoke on the condition that neither his position nor agency be identified, because he feared retaliation from his superiors and the White House for disclosing aspects of the program.

Referring to the firings of the U.S. attorneys and the broader plan targeting other Justice employees, the senior official said, "You cannot separate one from the other. They were one and part of the same plan by the White House."

Regardless, Bill Maher is a phony, a left gatekeeper. Though he makes inflammatory comments, he refuses to countenance anything that differs from the impossible "nineteen hijackers" myth of 9/11. Just like Michael Moore. Just like that piece of s**t Joe Cannon. Just like William Blum. Just like Amy Goodman. Come on people, it isn't that hard to figure out. The right wing controls both sides of the debate. People like Maher, Moore, Cannon, Goodman, Blum et al are getting paid to pretend to be leftist, say some inflammatory things that the right wing mouthpieces can use for saying "See how radical the left is?" while keeping all discussion of certain issues (like 9/11) in a little box, never allowing the debates to stray outside of that mainstream box. They are like the S.L.A. and Weather Underground of the media scene. Hey Joe Cannon, how much is the C.I.A. paying you nowadays? And how do you sleep at night? Hey Bill Maher, what do you think people of the future will think of you when it is common knowledge what you are?

Bear in mind, some of the left gatekeeper stooges may in fact be people who are of the leftist persuasion politically but have "sold their soul" to the establishment for money and are doing their bidding by keeping the debates confined to a little box. That way, genuine leftists if they don't know any better will say "Wow, look at how leftist Bill Maher is, and even HE doesn't say that 9/11 was an inside job, so it MUST not be true". It's very simple. Why do you think Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now" show's parent company Pacific Radio gets so much funding from the right-wing Ford Foundation? Because she's a gatekeeper, just like Maher, Moore, Cannon, Blum, and Noam Chomsky who I forgot to mention above. Remember back in the 1960s, in the aftermath of the J.F.K. assassination? Remember how Noam Chomsky to this day swears by the bullshit Warren Commission report? He's the same way regarding 9/11, even refusing to look at any of the (mountain of) evidence showing it was an inside job. A word of caution to everyone: Don't let their inflammatory rhetoric fool you. They're fakes. Don't get suckered in by the fake opposition.